National Public Radio found itself in the spotlight again last week, after one official made disparaging generalizations about members of the tea party, while a top NPR fundraiser suggested to a caller that a $5 million donation could be hidden from the IRS.

They believed they were speaking to Muslim philanthropists, but they were really being pranked by a conservative gadfly who taped their remarks.

This follows the controversial dismissal last fall of NPR commentator Juan Williams for remarks he made on Fox News about Muslims.

Last week's events led to the resignation of NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller, the suspension of the fundraiser and the departure of the official who made the remarks, who had already been scheduled to leave for another job.

This is more than just an image problem, but it is also an image problem, and it comes at a time when Republican and tea party members of Congress have proposed legislation to cut government funding for public radio and television.

And as chairman of the NPR board, Dave Edwards is at the center of the storm.

"I don't think anyone could have predicted what has gone on in the last six or seven months," said Edwards, who has been general manager of WUWM-FM (89.7), the public radio station licensed to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, since 1985.

After chairing a conference call last week in which the board accepted Schiller's resignation, Edwards traveled to NPR headquarters in Washington to deal with transitional issues and "express to (the staff) the confidence the board had in them." He said the fundraising team was "particularly demoralized, embarrassed and hurt" since "what was expressed on that tape does not express the views of any of them, or of NPR."

NPR general counsel Joyce Slocum has been named interim chief executive, and the board will begin a search for a new CEO, Edwards said.

Fundraiser could be test

The latest controversy has caused "a number of individual donors" to NPR to express concern, but Edwards said "nobody has told me of any significant defections" of donors because of it. Nor, he said, has there been backlash from listeners back home, "who understand that, even though we depend on NPR programming, WUWM is a separate organization."

How deep that understanding runs could be revealed Tuesday when WUWM holds a three-hour on-air fundraiser to make up for the shortfall from a fundraiser held during the Groundhog Day blizzard, "when people were out shoveling their driveways and not listening to the radio."

WUWM's budget is about $3 million, 80% of which comes from listener and corporate support. The remaining 20% comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and from UWM. NPR gets no direct federal funding, but the CPB does, and is requesting an advance appropriation of $495 million for fiscal year 2014. Of that amount, $330 million would go to public TV stations like WMVS-TV (Channel 10) and WMVT-TV (Channel 36), and $110 million to public radio stations like WUWM, which use the funds to buy such NPR programming as "Car Talk," All Things Considered" and "A Prairie Home Companion."

When Congress talks about eliminating this funding, "it doesn't impact NPR as much as it does local stations," said Edwards.